Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Publisher: Hodder

ISBN: 1444722654

Since I’ve been blogging (almost a year now) I have seen this book appear on Top Ten Tuesday lists nearly every week.  It seems to score highly for plot, genre, author, characters and even ‘Best books ever’ type lists.  So when it was suggested during my September book spa at Mr B’s bookshop in Bath I knew I had to read it.

It turned out better than expected, and I cannot recommend it highly enough!!!!

Short Synopsis:  Karou is a 17 year old art student in Prague.  She is far from ordinary, she has blue hair and wears a string of wishes around her neck.  She lives a double life, one foot in Prague and one in a shop ran by the only father figure she has ever known. She doesn’t know who her parents are, and the only family she knows are magical creatures unable to walk in our world.  She spends her days dodging her ex-boyfriend, attending art classes and collecting teeth.  Until on one of her errands she is attacked by an angel.  That’s when then things start to get interesting.

I could wax lyrical about this book using all the superlatives in my repertoire, but I will try to keep it brief.

The plot – fascinating, original, complicated and will keep you guessing

The characters – multifaceted, intriguing, lovable, frustrating, hateful, you name it.

The settings – this and the other world are well described and I had no problem imagining myself in Prague or the other realm.

The writing – inspired.  I practically inhaled the book!  I could not put it down.

What I liked most: Everything!  I can’t wait to get my hands on the next in the series.  I just have to read what is on my shelves first, which is painful, as Days of Blood and Starlight is all I want to read right now.

What I liked least: That I have to wait before I can get a copy of the sequel.

Review: Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch

Format: Kindle

This series just keeps getting better and better!

Short Synopsis:  An American student, the son of a politically powerful family is found murdered near Baker Street station.  It soon becomes clear that the death has some special characteristics suitable for the Folly’s involvement.  PC Peter Grant is called in to investigate the magical goings on, and forced to work with an FBI agent, crawling through the London sewers on the trail of mysterious creatures.

Each book does get better and better, as Peter Grant’s world is built upon each time.  The plots are consistently engaging and it feels not so much a genre of magical realism or urban fantasy as police procedural.  Magic is presented as just a part of PC Grant’s job.  Secondary characters are not forgotten and are allowed to grow and develop too.  I love every little titbit we find out about Molly.  I sincerely hope we learn her secrets and background one day!

What I liked most: Pretty much everything!  Characters developing well, we learn more about magic along with Peter and the stories are totally original and new every time.

What I liked least: It’s been a while since I read this, so it’s hard to look back and recall the things I didn’t like.  The only possible negative is that it took a while to put all the pieces together before we could get to the denouement. But then again that could be me being impatient.

Top Ten Tuesday - Covers I wish I could redesign

Today's TTT from The Broke and The Bookish is all about Book Covers, and those I wish I could redesign.

Despite hardly having an artistic bone in my body I sometimes look at a cover and wish they'd let me design it, thinking I could have done better.  I'm fully aware that I'm wrong of course, but still.

There's not many on my list this week, but here goes:

Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka.  I hated this book and couldn't finish it, which probably doesn't help.  I like scrapbooking, I really do, but it looks like something I could have done as a scrapbook layout.

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde.  I liked the book, it illustrated the concept well, but hated the cover of the version I had.  I just wanted to colour it in.

Red Seas under Red Skies by Scott Lynch.  Loved the book, and I loved the cover to the earlier book Lies of Locke Lamora, and I had hoped for a similar design.  I would have liked to see a boat deck with a shadowy figure of Jean Tannen brandishing the Wicked Sisters.

Nightfall by Asimov and Silverberg.  There's something very dated about this cover, I think it's the font, as the image is OK.

More recent editions of JD Robb In Death books.  I collect the series and I bought the first 20 or so books in the same format with a similar design concept and the later books have different designs.  It doesn't help that I bought later editions of the first books, and then first editions hardbacks of the more recent books, or that some I bought from the US, and some from the UK.  It makes them look very odd on the shelf next to each other.

That's it. please comment and share your list!

Review: The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson

Publisher: Hammer

ISBN: 0099561832

I don’t think I’ve ever been so productive on the blog as I have with this Challenge…

I recently read this as a book club selected read for October.  Helen from Fennell Books liked it as did I think everyone else to some degree.  I didn’t hate it, but I’m not a fan either.

Short Synopsis:  Based on the first set of well documented court records of the Pendle/Lancaster Witch Trials of 1612 it follows Alice Nutter through the recorded events up to, and a little beyond, the end of the court hearings.  There is some artistic licence is used to add detail and backstory etc…

As I mentioned earlier I didn’t hate it, but I can’t say that I enjoyed it either.  You know how sometimes there’s nothing really wrong with a book, but it just doesn’t gel well for you?  No particular reason, it just doesn’t suit?  I’m afraid this was the case for me with The Daylight Gate.

Maybe it was because it was based on true events.  I did spend most of the book thinking about what was real and what was not.  Some of it was clear, other parts were not, so I was rather distracted by that throughout.  Maybe it depends on whether you think witchcraft is real. I don’t, so much of the book dealing with the supernatural aspects I found totally unbelievable.  I personally didn't care for any of the characters.  I thought that the treatment of women in general, and Jennet Device in particular while utterly believable, was also utterly sickening.  This is probably the best part of the story, in terms of getting me invested in what was happening.  The ending was brilliant!

There were some excellent moments, and if you like historical fiction you might well enjoy this.

According to members of the book club this will be made into a film by Hammer as well.

Review: The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman

November challenge rocks!

I’d heard so many good things about this novel, and I really love a book that makes me feel something, so when this was on a multi-buy offer at Smiths I couldn’t resist.  Nor could I leave it sitting on the shelf for ages waiting for me to pick it up.

It’s one of those rare books too that had me thinking about it when I couldn’t read it.  Great for my reading experience, very bad for working life!

Short Synopsis:  Tom is a soldier returned from WW1 to live off the coast of Western Australia where he is a lighthouse keeper.  He marries Isabel and they’re madly in love and desperately sad that they haven’t been able to have children, so when a rowing boat containing a baby and a man’s body wash up on the shores of the lighthouse they make a decision that will change many lives forever.

The story is wonderfully written and draws you into Tom and Isabel’s world until you feel what they feel.  When they struggle with the decisions they’ve made I felt for each of them, and when faced with harder and harder choices my heart just ached.  The ending was beautifully handled and you will need a book of tissues close to hand.

What I liked most: The setting, the emotional drama, the characterisation.

What I liked least: There were a couple of moments that I felt the story could have moved a little faster, but that might be my impatience to resolve the pain everyone is going through.